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<title>ACE View &mdash; a natural language interface to knowledge engineering</title>
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ontology and rule editor. ACE View uses Attempto Controlled English (ACE) in the front-end and
Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) in
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<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="images/aceview_logo_6.png" alt="logo"/>
</div>
-->

<h1>ACE View &mdash; a natural language interface to knowledge engineering</h1>


<h2>Introduction</h2>

<div class="ad">Watch the <a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/docs/screencast_aceview.mov">screencast</a> (12'34, 43MB, QuickTime)!<br/>Note: shows an old version of ACE View (v1.2.1)</div>

<p>ACE View is an ontology and rule editor that uses
<a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/">Attempto Controlled English</a> (ACE)
in order to create, view and edit
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/OWL_Working_Group">OWL 2</a> ontologies
and
<a href="http://www.w3.org/Submission/SWRL/">SWRL</a> rulesets.</p>

<ul>
	<li>You can create OWL/SWRL knowledge bases by working solely in ACE.</li>
	<li>You can open existing OWL 2 ontologies and view them as ACE texts.</li>
	<li>You can edit OWL/SWRL knowledge bases (i.e. add, remove, modify OWL axioms
	and SWRL rules) by switching between the ACE view (i.e. controlled English) and
	the traditional "Prot&eacute;g&eacute; views" (forms and description logic formulas).</li>
</ul>

<p>In many cases you don't have to know the details of OWL and SWRL &mdash;
the ACE view hides them from you.
But you do have to know ACE. In order to get started read:
<a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/docs/writing_owl_in_ace.html">Writing OWL ontologies in ACE</a>.
Later visit the <a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch">Attempto project website</a> to learn more.</p>

<p>ACE View is implemented as an extension to
the popular ontology editor
<a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/download/registered.html#p4">Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 4</a>
(please take time to
<a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/download/register.html">register</a>
as a Prot&eacute;g&eacute; user).
Note that ACE View does not work with Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 3.</p>

<p>If you have questions, then post them to the
<a href="https://lists.ifi.uzh.ch/listinfo/attempto">Attempto Mailing List</a>.</p>
<p>In order submit bugs and feature requests use the
<a href="http://code.google.com/p/aceview/issues/list">ACE View Issues List</a>.</p>



<h2>How to install ACE View?</h2>

<p>Installing ACE View is a simple process thanks to the
<a href="http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/index.php/EnablePluginAutoUpdate">Prot&eacute;g&eacute;
plug-in auto update feature</a> which provides an
overview of the Prot&eacute;g&eacute; plug-in repository,
allows new plugins to be installed, and existing ones to
be updated in case they have newer versions.</p>

<!--
<p>There are two equally simple ways to install ACE View. In the first way you should
first install the latest official release of Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 4.0 (unless you
already have it) and then
copy the ACE View jar-file into Prot&eacute;g&eacute; plugins-directory. In the second
way you install from a zip-archive that contains both Prot&eacute;g&eacute; and
the ACE View jar-file (already placed into the plugins-directory).</p>
-->

<p>Proceed as follows.</p>

<ol>
	<li>Download and install Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 4.0 by following
	the installation instructions at
	<a href="http://protege.stanford.edu/download/registered.html#p4">http://protege.stanford.edu/download/registered.html#p4</a>.</li>
	<li>Start Prot&eacute;g&eacute;.</li>
	<li>Press <span class="menu">File&nbsp;&rarr;&nbsp;Check for plugins...</span>.</li>
	<li>Select "ACE View" and press "Install".</li>
	<li>Restart Prot&eacute;g&eacute;.</li>
</ol>

<p>That's it!</p>

<p class="warning">If this didn't work for some reason, then
just manually copy the ACE View jar-file
<a href="http://aceview.googlecode.com/files/ch.uzh.ifi.attempto.aceview.jar?v=1.2.20">ch.uzh.ifi.attempto.aceview.jar</a> (3 MB)
into the Prot&eacute;g&eacute; plugins-directory.</p>

<!--
<p>(Note: these instructions are for Unix/Mac users. Windows
users will probably have to use a different unpacking software
and run the "run.bat".)</p>

<ol>
<li>Download
<a href="protege_with_aceview_090217.zip">protege_with_aceview_090217.zip</a> (14.1 MB).
This zip-archive contains a recent version of Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 4 with the ACE View
plug-in already integrated.</li>

<li>Unpack the archive. On the Unix command-line it is done like this:

<pre>
unzip protege_with_aceview_090217.zip
</pre>
</li>

<li>Go into the created subdirectory "equinox":

<pre>
cd equinox
</pre></li>

<li>Start Prot&eacute;g&eacute; by executing the shell-script "run.sh". (Windows users
will have to execute "run.bat"; Mac OS X users can also execute
"run.command" by clicking on it.)

<pre>
sh run.sh
</pre></li>
</ol>
-->


<h2>How to configure ACE View?</h2>

<p>The quickest way to reach ACE View after Prot&eacute;g&eacute; has been launched,
is to select "Create new OWL ontology", press "Continue" twice, and press "Finish".
The Prot&eacute;g&eacute; interface opens up with all its tabs, including the
"ACE View" tab.
In case the "ACE View" tab is not visible, then load it by clicking on the "ACE View"
menu item in the <span class="menu">Tabs</span>-menu. All ACE views
are available under <span class="menu">View&nbsp;&rarr;&nbsp;ACE&nbsp;views</span> but note that most
of them are displayed automatically by the "ACE View" tab.</p>

<p class="warning">Note: if some ACE View views did not load (and there was an error message)
then execute:
<span class="menu">Tabs&nbsp;&rarr;&nbsp;Reset selected tab to default state</span>.</p>


<p>In order to be able to use ACE View you must
be connected to the internet
because the OWL&rarr;ACE translator is currently only available as a webservice.
(By default, the ACE&rarr;OWL/SWRL translator is also used via a webservice,
but it is also possible to install it locally, see below for the instructions.)
The Prot&eacute;g&eacute; preferences panel contains a tab with the ACE View preferences
where you can
configure the webservice addresses. For example, set them as shown in
the following screenshot of the preferences-panel.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_preferences_090218.png" alt="ACE View preferences"/>
</div>

<p>Normally, one is expected to first define the content words before they are going to be used in
ACE sentences. For example, in order to enter the sentence
<span class="acetext">Every dog hates a cat.</span>
one must first
define the words `dog', `hate', `cat' as OWL entities (class and property names).
(Note that the morphological surface forms like `hates' are generated automatically
and stored as entity annotations while the entity is being declared.)
If you want to enter a sentence without defining the words first, then you can enable
"Parse sentences that contain undefined wordforms" and rely on the built-in lexicon ("Use Clex")
and guessing ("Guess unknown words") that the ACE&rarr;OWL/SWRL service provides.
In case you switch on "Generate paraphrase" then all the sentences entered in the ACE View
are additionally paraphrased. The paraphrases belong to a fragment of ACE called Core ACE.
This fragment reformulates <em>every</em>-sentences as <em>if-then</em>-sentences and
replaces relative clauses with full sentences.</p>


<h2>Views</h2>

<h3>Introduction</h3>

<p>ACE View provides many different views to the ACE text. Some of these views are editable,
i.e. the word(form)s and sentences shown in the view can be changed or removed.</p>

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<td>View name</td>
<td>Function</td>
<td>Editable?</td>
<td>Default?</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>ACE Snippet Editor</td>
<td>Allows a single snippet to be added to or deleted from the active ACE text.
A snippet is a short sequence of one or more ACE sentences.
Usually just one sentence.</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Feedback</td>
<td>Shows some information about the selected snippet: error messages, paraphrase,
annotations, corresponding logical axioms, similar snippets.</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Text</td>
<td>Shows the active ACE text as plain text</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Snippets</td>
<td>Shows the active ACE text as a list of snippets.</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Q&amp;A</td>
<td>Shows all the questions (and their answers) in the active ACE text</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Entailments</td>
<td>Shows the entailments derived from the active ACE text</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>no</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Explanation</td>
<td>Shows the explanation for the snippet that was active when
the <span class="button">Why?</span>-button was pressed</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Lexicon</td>
<td>Shows the active lexicon as a table</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Lexicon format</td>
<td>Shows the active lexicon as plain text
<a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/docs/ace_lexicon.html">ACE Lexicon format</a></td>
<td>no</td>
<td>no</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Words</td>
<td>Shows an alphabetically sorted list of content words of the active ACE text</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Word Usage</td>
<td>Shows the usage of the selected content word</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ACE Index</td>
<td>Lists all the content words together with their usage in the active ACE text</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>no</td>
</tr>
<!--
<tr>
<td>ACE Wordform</td>
<td>Shows the surface forms of the selected word.
This is a
modified version of <a href="http://www.co-ode.org/downloads/protege-x/plugins/#annotate">Alternative Annotation View</a>.</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
-->
<tr>
<td>ACE Metrics</td>
<td>Shows some statistics about the active ACE text and its lexicon</td>
<td>no</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<p>All views are available from
the <span class="menu">View&nbsp;&rarr;&nbsp;ACE&nbsp;views</span> menu.
Unless the view is more technical, it is also
included in the default configuration of the ACE View tab.</p>

<h3>Snippet editor</h3>

<p>The Snippet Editor is for working with very short texts
(one or two sentences),
where the sentences are syntactically or logically very connected, e.g.</p>

<ul>
	<li><span class="acetext">Every student is a pupil. Every pupil is a student.</span> (class equivalence)</li>
	<li><span class="acetext">There is a country. It borders Germany.</span> (anaphorically connected sentences)</li>
</ul>


<p>The Snippet Editor shows the currently selected snippet (either asserted or
entailed) and allows you to
change or delete it, or add a new snippet to the active ACE text. The editor
supports auto-completion of content word forms.
The <span class="button">Annotate</span>-button lets you annotate the
snippet (e.g. add tags or comments), and
the <span class="button">Why?</span>-button lets you ask for an explanation
of why the snippet holds.</p>

<p>The Snippet Editor is best used together with the "ACE Feedback" view
which shows the</p>

<ul>
<li>reason for the error, if the snippet could not be mapped to OWL/SWRL;</li>
<li>paraphrase of the snippet (this can be turned on/off in the
ACE View preferences);</li>
<li>annotations, if the axioms that the snippet corresponds to have been annotated;</li>
<li>corresponding OWL and SWRL axioms;</li>
<li>similar snippets (these that contain the same content words).</li>
</ul>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_editor_and_feedback_090203.png" alt="ACE Snippet Editor and Feedback views."/>
</div>

<p>If a sentence could not be translated into OWL/SWRL then an error message
is shown explaining the nature of the error. For example, the
sentence <span class="acetext">Every baltic-state is EU-country ...</span> is not a correct ACE
sentence because it lacks a determiner in front of a noun.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_editor_and_feedback_error_090203.png" alt="ACE Snippet Editor and Feedback views: Error messages."/>
</div>


<h3>Text view</h3>

<p>Text view is a simple view that shows the complete knowledge base.
You can enter sentences and integrate them into the knowledge base by
pressing "Update". You can store the complete knowledge base (in ACE) by
select, copy, and paste.</p>

<p>For example, create a new ontology and enter the following ACE text
in the "ACE Text" view. (Note that you have to use "Clex" and "guessing" to successfully
parse this text, unless you enter all the words as OWL entities first.)</p>

<pre>
Every country is a territory.

Every city is a territory.

No body-of-water is a territory.

Every city-state is a city.

Every city-state is a country.

Every territory that is not bordered by a body-of-water is a landlocked-territory.
Every landlocked-territory is a territory that is not bordered by a body-of-water.

Every territory that is surrounded by a country is an enclave.
Every enclave is a territory that is surrounded by a country.

Every territory that is surrounded by something that is not a body-of-water
	is not bordered by a body-of-water.

Every non-landlocked-enclave is an enclave that is not a landlocked-territory.

Italy is a country.

Vatican_City is a city-state.
Vatican_City is surrounded by Italy.

What is a territory?

Which enclave is not a landlocked-territory?
</pre>

<!--
<pre>
Every cow is an animal.
Every sheep is an animal.
Dolly is a sheep.
Dolly is a namesake of Dolly_Parton.
Dolly_Parton is a woman.
Every woman is a female.
If X is a namesake of something that is a female then X is a female.
Every cow is an animal and is a vegetarian.
Every cow is black and white.
No vegetarian eats an animal.
No vegetarian eats something that is a part of an animal.
No vegetarian likes a meat-eater.
No vegetarian likes somebody who likes a meat-eater.
Every mad-cow is a cow that eats a brain that is a part of a sheep.
Dolly_Parton's address is "Tennessee, U.S.A".
What is an animal and is a vegetarian?
</pre>
-->

<p>Now press "Update" to integrate this text into the ontology.</p>

<!--
<p>You should see something like the following.</p>

<div class="image">
<a href="images/aceview_ALL_080929.png">
<img src="images/aceview_ALL_080929.png" style="width: 500px;" alt="ACE View overview"/>
</a>
</div>

<p>Note that on the left side of the "ACE Text" view, three smaller windows are located.</p>

<ul>
<li>The "Object Properties" window
shows the properties in the ontology (i.e. verbs and relational nouns in the ACE text).
This is a standard Prot&eacute;g&eacute; view. You can also look at the noun hierarchy,
and a list of proper names.</li>
<li>The "Wordform" window shows the morphological annotations to the word `eat'.
ACE View automatically adds
morphological annotations to the classes and properties (nouns and verbs).
E.g. the verb `eat' is provided with its infinitive form (`eat'), 3rd person singular form
(`eats') and past participle form (`eaten'). You can easily modify these automatically
added forms.</li>
<li>The "ACE Metrics" table shows some statistics about the entered ACE text.</li>
</ul>
-->

<!--
<p class="warning">Note that currently you have to install the "Annotate View" separately, and
configure it to be like shown on the screenshot. (Download it from the
<a href="http://www.co-ode.org/downloads/protege-x/plugins/#annotate">Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 4.0 plug-ins page</a>.)
This view is not essential however,
you can also use the standard Prot&eacute;g&eacute; annotation views to get information
about the linguistic annotations added to the words.</p>
-->


<h3>Words views</h3>

<p>"ACE Words" provides a view to all the content words (nouns, verbs, proper names)
of the ACE text. For each word its frequency is show in parentheses.
The frequency denotes the number of sentences that contain this word in the text.
Clicking on the word selects the word so that other views will start displaying
information about the word, e.g. its usage will be displayed in the "ACE Word Usage" view.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_words_080929.png" alt="ACE View Words and Word Usage: vegetarian"/>
</div>

<p>Words that do not have linguistic annotations (singular, plural, and past participle forms) yet
are displayed in grey color.</p>


<h3>Snippet views</h3>

<p>Clicking on "ACE Snippets" opens a view that lists all the snippets
in the ACE text together with some of their properties (content word count,
parser error/warning message count, corresponding OWL/SWRL axiom count, timestamp, ...).
You can sort the list alphabetically or by the properties, you can highlight or show only
snippets which contain the currently selected word,
you can search the table by a keyword (press <code>Ctrl-F</code>),
and you can also edit each snippet by double-clicking on the corresponding table row.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_snippets.png" alt="ACE Snippet view."/>
</div>

<p>Clicking on the table row selects the corresponding snippet, so that e.g.
the Snippet Editor will display the snippet, and the Snippet Feedback
will show the properties of the snippet.</p>




<h3>Q&amp;A view</h3>

<p>The Q&amp;A view lists all the questions (i.e. asserted interrogative snippets)
which will be answered on the
basis of the existing text (including also the implicit knowledge in the text) whenever you
run the reasoner. First you need to switch on the
reasoner (e.g. select: <span class="menu">Reasoner&nbsp;&rarr;&nbsp;Pellet</span>).
Every time you run the reasoner (by: <span class="menu">Reasoner&nbsp;&rarr;&nbsp;Classify</span>)
followed by the "Update answers" action the answers to the questions are updated.</p>

<p>The questions must contain exactly one query word (either `who', `what', `which', or `whose'), e.g.</p>

<ul>
<li><span class="acetext">Who is John?</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">What is a country that borders France?</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">Which countries border no sea?</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">Whose namesake is Dolly?</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">Whose address is "Winterthurerstrasse 312"?</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">Which EU-country is a NATO-country?</span></li>
</ul>

<!--
<p>For example, enter the following text. (Note: make sure that `EU-country' is already defined
as a class name. The reason is that the ACE parser does not try to guess capitalized words
to be common nouns.)</p>

<pre>
Europe contains France.
Everything that Europe contains is Switzerland or is a EU-country.
France is not Switzerland.
Every baltic-state is a EU-country.
Every EU-country is a country.
Switzerland is a country-of-Europe.
Every EU-country is a country-of-Europe.
Every baltic-state is contained by Europe.
Portugal borders exactly 1 country.
Portugal borders Spain.
Spain is a EU-country.
Portugal is a EU-country.
Every country-of-Europe is contained by Europe.
If X contains Y then Y is located-in X.
What is a EU-country?
What does Europe contain?
Which EU-country does not border a country that is not a EU-country?
</pre>
-->

<!--
Portugal borders nothing but EU-countries.
/* BUG: support: Which EU-country borders nothing but EU-countries? */
-->

<p>The answers are given as three lists of words.</p>

<ol>
<li>Named individuals i.e. proper names that satisfy the question, e.g.
<span class="acetext"><b>France</b> is a EU-country and is a NATO-country.</span></li>
<li>Named classes (sub classes) i.e. groups that satisfy the question, e.g.
<span class="acetext">Every <b>baltic-state</b> is EU-country and is a NATO-country.</span></li>
<li>Named classes (super classes), i.e. groups that every answer belongs to, e.g.
<span class="acetext">France is a <b>country</b>.</span>,
<span class="acetext">Every baltic-state is a <b>territory</b>.</span></li>
</ol>

<p>For example the following picture shows a list of questions
about a text about European countries, and shows the answers to the question
<span class="acetext">Which EU-country is a NATO-country?</span>.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_qanda.png" alt="ACE Q&amp;A view"/>
</div>


<p>The answer counts are presented in a tabular and sortable form, so that
you can easily get answers to questions that involve counting and comparison
of counts. Such questions cannot be expressed in the underlying DL-Query language 
nor in ACE (at least currently). Such questions are for example:</p>

<ul>
<li><b>How many</b> member states does EU have?</li>
<li>Which organization has <b>more</b> members, EU or NATO?</li>
<li>Which language has the <b>most</b> EU-countries speaking it as the official language?</li>
</ul>

<p>Note that the counts represent <b>known</b> answers, i.e. answers which the reasoner
was able to derive on the basis of the knowledge base. If the reasoner has not yet been
applied to the question then a question mark (<b>?</b>) is shown in the count cells. In case
the question corresponds to an unsatisfiable expression (e.g. <span class="acetext">Which
EU-country is not an EU-country?</span>) then nothing is displayed in the cell.</p>

<p>Every answer can be expressed as an ACE sentence (i.e. as full answer)
but for a better overview just lists of words are presented.
However, when you click on a word then the full answer appears in the Snippet Editor.
You can add this snippet to the text (if it's not already there), or remove it from
the text (if it is there), or ask for the explanations using the
<span class="button">Why?</span>-button.</p>



<h3>Entailments view</h3>

<p>The Entailments view lists sentences that follow from but that were not explicitly stated in
the text. The list is updated whenever you run the reasoner (similarly to the Q&amp;A view).
As any non-trivial text entails infinitely many sentences, only the sentences with certain simple
structure are reported in this view, e.g.</p>

<ul>
<li><span class="acetext">Every man is a human.</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">John is a man.</span></li>
<li><span class="acetext">John likes Mary.</span></li>
</ul>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_entailments_081126.png" alt="ACE Entailments view: Ireland is an island-country."/>
</div>

<p>Such entailments can also be explained by listing a minimal set of
snippets that cause the entailment. In order to see the explanations,
double-click on the entailed snippet, the explanation appears in the
Explanation view.</p>

<p>Entailments which might point to certain modeling errors are written in red
(e.g. <span class="acetext" style="color: red">Nothing is a non-landlocked-enclave.</span>).
Each entailment is tagged with a timestamp. Tag <b>0</b>
means <em>current entailment</em>. Negative tags (<b>-1</b>, <b>-2</b>, etc.)
point to entailments which do not hold currently,
but which were obtained in previous executions of the reasoner. Such tagging
provides a simple method for detecting lost entailments.</p>

<!--
<p>Thanks to the reasoner we learn (among other things) that the
statements about "mad-cow" lead to a strange situation: mad cows cannot exists
&mdash; <em>Nothing is a mad-cow.</em> &mdash;
as they cannot be both vegetarians and eat brains of sheep.</p>
-->

<!--
<p>Sometimes there are even several
equally good (i.e. equally short) explanations. For example, if one enters
the following text</p>

<pre>
Every dogcatcow is a dog that is a cat and that is a cow.
No dog is a cat.
No cat is a cow.
No dog is a cow.
</pre>

<p>and runs the reasoner then the reasoner finds a sentence that follows from the text, namely
<em>Nothing is a dogcatcow.</em> and can explain this finding in three different
ways.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_explanations_080806.png" alt="ACE View Explanations: Nothing is a dogcatcow."/>
</div>
-->


<h3>Lexicon view</h3>

<p>The lexicon view lists all the content words
(nouns, transitive verbs, proper names) in the ACE text. The surface forms
(singular, plural, past participle) of each word
can be edited.</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/aceview_lexicon.png" alt="ACE Lexicon view"/>
</div>


<h2>Actions</h2>

<p>The actions initiated via the standard Prot&eacute;g&eacute; menus (e.g. Back/forward arrows,
search box, <span class="menu">Edit &rarr; Undo</span>)
trigger a corresponding change in the ACE View views. In addition, there are ACE View
specific actions listed in the <span class="menu">Tools</span>-menu.
The actions apply to the active ACE text.</p>

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<td>Action name</td>
<td>Function</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Create AceWiki</td>
<td>Pops up a file chooser to ask for a zip file name. Writes the
ACE text as a set of AceWiki articles into the
specified zip file. Each article corresponds to a content word and
contains all the snippets that contain this word.
Only if the lexicon contains all the required forms for a word is its
corresponding article created.
(You can run the "Fill lexicon" action to automatically generate
missing forms.)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Reparse failed snippets</td>
<td>Reparses every snippet that has no corresponding OWL/SWRL axioms.
Useful if there are many snippets which have failed because of missing lexical entries,
and meanwhile the required entries have been added.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Fill lexicon</td>
<td>Fills every empty slot in the lexicon by generating lexical annotations
(singular, plural, past participle) for each OWL entity.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Update answers</td>
<td>Updates the answers to every question in the ACE text.
This can take a long time, depending on the complexity and the amount
of questions.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<h2>Examples</h2>

<p>Here are some example ACE texts and OWL/SWRL ontologies for you to play with.
The ACE texts should be copied into the "Text view", after which "Update" should be pressed.
The OWL ontologies can be opened in the usual way, via <span class="menu">File&rarr;Open...</span>.</p>
<p>Reasoning with the examples was tested with Pellet 2.</p>

<h3>People and Pets</h3>

<p><a href="examples/people_pets_nice.ace.txt">people_pets_nice.ace.txt</a> (122 snippets)
is the famous "People and pets" ontology automatically verbalized in ACE
and later manually modified a bit to make it more readable. Note that it
uses the word `pet' as both a regular noun and
a relational noun (<em>of</em>-construct). As a result you get an entity `pet'
which is used via punning both as a class name and object property name.</p>

<h3>Countries</h3>

<p><a href="examples/countries.ace.txt">countries.ace.txt</a> (~250 snippets) contains
some membership and bordering information about (mostly European) countries.
This text also contains many questions (the answers to which will be filled in
if the reasoner is executed).
Note that one should first load the vocabulary <a href="examples/countries_base.owl">countries_base.owl</a>
before the ACE text can be parsed.</p>


<h3>Iokaste</h3>

<p>The <a href="http://www.inf.unibz.it/~franconi/dl/course/dlhb/dlhb-02.pdf">"Iokaste" example (on pages 73, 74)</a>
demonstrates a complex (open-world) reasoning problem.
The question is who of the Greek characters mentioned in the text
could be classified as "answer".</p>

<pre>
Iokaste's child is Oedipus.

Iokaste's child is Polyneikes.

Oedipus's child is Polyneikes.

Polyneikes' child is Thersandros.

Oedipus is a patricide.

Thersandros is not a patricide.

Everybody whose child is a patricide whose child is
	somebody who is not a patricide is an answer.
</pre>

<p>Note that we could get the answer also by asking the question:</p>

<pre>
Whose child is a patricide whose child is somebody who is not a patricide?
</pre>

<!--
<p class="warning">The entailment explanation is unfortunately done by listing
all the sentences in the text. A "branching explanation" would be better.</p>
-->

<h3>Five houses</h3>

<p><a href="examples/five_houses.ace.txt">five_houses.ace.txt</a> (~20 snippets)
describes a sequence of five houses (<em>House1</em>, ..., <em>House5</em>). The properties
of the sequence are described (e.g. there is only a single "first house"), but
where the houses are exactly located is left open.</p>

<pre>
House_1 (first) &rarr; House_? &rarr; House_3 (middle) &rarr; House_? &rarr; House_? (last)
</pre>

<p>Answers to the questions give us feedback if our modeling is correct (and complete enough).</p>

<div class="image">
<img src="images/demo_five_houses.png" alt="Demo: Five houses"/>
</div>

<p>Note that although this text is tiny, it can take a reasoner a long time to answer
these questions.</p>

<!--
<li><a href="examples/primer.owl">primer.owl</a> (78 snippets when verbalized) is
an example ontology from the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/">OWL 2 Web Ontology Language:
Primer</a>.
Two constructs are deleted: Import
and AsymmetricObjectProperty (Prot&eacute;g&eacute; failed to handle them). Note that
the naming convention used in this ontology is not what OWL&rarr;ACE expects,
so the resulting verbalization is not perfect.</li>
-->

<!--
<li>[BUG: add: OWL version of Hydrology or Buildings and places]</li>
-->

<h2>Known issues</h2>

<!--
<p>ACE View is made available for demonstration purposes.
Do not expect it to solve real knowledge engineering problems yet.
Some known issues:</p>
-->

<ul>
<li>Because ACE View currently uses webservices to translate between ACE and OWL/SWRL,
it is relatively slow. Do not try to parse large ACE texts or verbalize
large ontologies (e.g. more than 500 sentences/axioms).</li>
<li>Some operations provided by standard Prot&eacute;g&eacute; menus do not yet work correctly with ACE View: Rename, Change ontology URI, Show all loaded ontologies, etc.</li>
<li>OWL data properties are not fully supported.</li>
<li>Anonymous individuals could be handled in a smarter way.</li>
<li>The lexicon does not have a dedicated type for relational nouns (e.g. `part of').
As a result, roundtripping of sentences that contain <em>of</em>-constructions does not
work correctly.</li>
<li>Some types of axioms are not verbalized:
<ul>
<li>SWRL rules,</li>
<li>Axioms that contain very complex class expressions,</li>
<li><em>DisjointClasses</em> and other such "lists".</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>


<h2>Which APE interface to use?</h2>

<p>APE &mdash; the Attempto Parsing Engine &mdash; offers conversion of ACE sentences
into various logical forms, including
OWL/SWRL axioms and DL-Queries. From ACE&nbsp;View,
APE can be accessed via three different interfaces.</p>

<ul>
<li>APE Local</li>
<li>APE Webservice (HTTP interface)</li>
<li>APE Socket (socket interface)</li>
</ul>

<p>All three provide the exact same functionality.</p>

<p>By default, the APE webservice interface is used, accessing APE that runs on the Attempto server.
This requires
no installation and configuration, but one needs an internet access and has to live with
a slower processing speed.</p>

<p>Alternatively, you can install APE on your computer and access it locally.
Follow the instructions
at the <a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/downloads/">Attempto Downloads page</a>.
If you have a local APE installation (i.e. the file <code>ape.exe</code>), then you
can use all the three types of interfaces. See the <code>README.txt</code> that comes
with the APE distribution to learn how to run APE in the various modes.</p>

<p>The fastest ACE processing is provided by APE Local.
(APE Local is about 1.5 times faster than an HTTP or socket interface that is set up
locally).</p>

<p>To set up APE Local, do the following steps.</p>

<ol>
	<li>Install the latest version of SWI-Prolog (we have tested with v5.6.61, but more recent
	versions should work as well),
	with packages: <code>clib</code>, <code>sgml</code>, <code>http</code>,
	and <code>jpl</code>. On Windows and Mac OS X, you get all the required packages
	with the default installation. On Linux you might need to install the packages separately,
	e.g. on Ubuntu, install the Ubuntu packages: <code>swi-prolog</code>, <code>swi-prolog-clib</code>,
	<code>swi-prolog-http</code>, <code>swi-prolog-sgml</code>.</li>

	<li>Create <code>ape.exe</code> as explained on
	the <a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/downloads/">Attempto Downloads page</a>.</li>

	<li>Make sure that SWI-Prolog's <code>libjpl</code> is referenced by the Java library path.
	<ul>
		<li>On Windows: add a reference to the SWI-Prolog's bin-directory to <code>PATH</code>.
		The bin-directory contains the required <code>jpl.dll</code>. Something like:
		<pre>SWI_HOME_DIR=C:\Program Files\pl</pre>
		<pre>PATH=%SWI_HOME_DIR%\bin\;%PATH%</pre>
		</li>
		<li>On Mac OS X: add a reference to the SWI-Prolog's lib-directory to
		<code>JAVA_LIBRARY_PATH</code>. The lib-directory contains the required
		<code>libjpl.jnilib</code> file. The location of the lib-directory depends
		of the Mac OS X and SWI-Prolog versions, e.g. on MacOS X Tiger/PPC with SWI-Prolog 5.6.61,
		using Bash-shell, this command looks like:
		<pre>export JAVA_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib/swipl-5.6.61/lib/powerpc-darwin8.11.0/</pre>
		</li>
		<li>On Linux: similar to Mac OS X (but <code>libjpl</code> is called <code>libjpl.so</code>)</li>
	</ul>
</li>
<!--
<li>Copy <code>libjpl.jnilib</code> (<code>libjpl.so</code> on Linux, <code>libjpl.dll</code>
on Windows)
into the Prot&eacute;g&eacute; root directory.
You can find this file among the libraries that come with your SWI Prolog installation.
The installation paths differ among operating systems and SWI Prolog versions.
For example, in MacOS X Tiger/PPC, this file is located in
<code>/opt/local/lib/swipl-5.6.61/lib/powerpc-darwin8.11.0/</code></li>
-->
<li>(This step you probably do not need to do.) In the lib-directory of the ACE View jar-file,
replace <code>jpl.jar</code> with the version that comes with your SWI Prolog installation.</li>
<li>Start Prot&eacute;g&eacute; and modify the ACE View preferences:
<ul>
	<li>Set the ACE&rarr;OWL/SWRL service to <em>APE Local</em>.</li>
	<!--
	<li>[BUG: this is ignored] Point to the location of the SWI-Prolog executable, e.g. <code>/opt/local/bin/swipl</code>
	on Mac OS X/Linux, <code>C:\Program Files\pl\bin\plcon.exe</code> on Windows (???).</li>
	-->
	<li>Point to the location of <code>ape.exe</code>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>


<h2>Installing the OWL verbalizer locally</h2>

<p>It is also possible to install the OWL&rarr;ACE webservice locally.
Download it from 
<a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/downloads/files/owl_verbalizer-090602_unofficial.zip">here</a>.
It depends on SWI-Prolog with packages
<code>clib</code>, <code>sgml</code>, <code>http</code>. Installation instructions are
in the <code>README.txt</code> file.</p>


<h2>Dependencies on external libraries</h2>

<p>Apart from the libraries that come with Prot&eacute;g&eacute; 4, ACE View depends of the following
libraries. These are all included in the ACE View distribution and also in the jar-file, so
that you do not need to download them separately.</p>

<ul>
<li><code>attempto_ape.jar</code> (LGPL) from <a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch">Attempto project</a>
(in Attempto Java Packages) provides three interfaces to the ACE parser (APELocal, APEWebservice, and APESocket).</li>
<li><code>attempto_owl.jar</code> (LGPL) from <a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch">Attempto project</a>
(in Attempto Java Packages) provides an interface to the OWL verbalizer.</li>
<li><code>swingx-1.0.jar</code> (LGPL) from <a href="http://swinglabs.org">SwingLabs</a> is used for the rich (sortable,
editable, filterable, highlightable) tables.</li>
<li><code>swing-worker-1.2.jar</code> (LGPL) from <a href="http://swingworker.dev.java.net">http://swingworker.dev.java.net</a> is used to run some time-consuming jobs (e.g. explanation generation)
in the background.</li>
<li><code>simplenlg-v37.jar</code> (<a href="licenses/simplenlg-license.txt">simplenlg-license.txt</a>) from <a href="http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~ereiter/simplenlg/">SimpleNLG package</a>
is used to automatically generate surface forms (plural nounforms, and singular and past participle verbforms)
for classes, properties and individuals.</li>
<li><code>commons-httpclient-3.1.jar</code> (Apache 2) used by <code>attempto_ape.jar</code> (specifically APEWebservice)
and <code>attempto_owl.jar</code> which use it for the HTTP communication with the ACE webservices (see <a href="http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/">Jakarta Commons HTTP Client</a>).</li>
<li><code>jpl.jar</code> (LGPL) used by <code>attempto_ape.jar</code> (specifically APELocal).</li>
<li><code>jdom.jar</code> ("Apache-style" license) used by <code>attempto_ape.jar</code>.</li>
<li><code>commons-codec-1.3.jar</code> (Apache 2) used by <code>commons-httpclient-3.1.jar</code>.</li>
<li><code>RadixTree-0.3.jar</code> (MIT) from <a href="http://code.google.com/p/radixtree/">Google Code: radixtree</a> used for auto-completion.</li>
<li><code>google-collect-1.0-rc2.jar</code> (Apache 2) from <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-collections/">Google Collections Library</a></li>
</ul>


<h2>Developers corner</h2>

<p>The ACE View source code is hosted by
<a href="http://code.google.com/hosting/">Google Code Project Hosting</a>
at <a href="http://code.google.com/p/aceview/">http://code.google.com/p/aceview/</a>.
If you are interested in contributing code to the ACE View project, send an email
to <a href="mailto:kaljurand@gmail.com">kaljurand@gmail.com</a>. Note that you need to have a Google Account
to become a project member.</p>


<h2>Similar projects</h2>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/acewiki">AceWiki</a></li>
<li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/confluence">ROO Rabbit to OWL Ontology construction</a></li>
<li><a href="http://smile.deri.ie/evaluation/2008/ROA">RoundTrip Ontology Authoring (ROA)</a></li>
</ul>

<address>
Kaarel Kaljurand
2009-10-15
</address>

</body>
</html>
